


All Summer Long

by Major



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Amnesia, F/M, Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-08 16:05:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8851303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Major/pseuds/Major
Summary: Caitlin loses her memory. It's the start of a pretty good summer.





	

Caitlin came around twenty-two minutes after midnight on the last day of May, three days after landing in the hospital. Cisco knew since he couldn’t stop looking between her and the clock and willing time to slow down since the doctors had warned them that the longer she was unconscious, the higher the likelihood was that she wouldn’t wake up at all. Clocking her head on a cement step while escaping the latest black hat meta wasn’t good for the brain, apparently.

Running to her side to find her limp had freaked him out. Pulling his hand away from her hair to find blood on it had scared the shit out of him. Barry tried to run off with her but he’d yelled for him to stop and called an ambulance. They couldn’t risk moving her and making it worse. With The Flash standing right there, waiting for help had been torture. Those seconds lasted as long or longer than the ones staring at the clock while he held vigil at her bedside.

“Hey,” he said, smiling as he got up from his chair and moved to her side when her eyes fluttered open and his heart decided it could go ahead and beat again. “Not cool. I thought we agreed to stop almost dying all the time. This was in clear violation of that pact. So I’m punishing you. You have to ride the tilt-a-whirl with me again with a pre-slushie handicap. First one to vomit loses.”

Caitlin stared at him with wide eyes a moment before asking what happened, so he explained all about the getting thrown through the air bit and the head trauma and whatnot.

“I—Okay. Who are you? And what’s a,” she paused to make sure she got the term right, “meta human?”

Cisco stared. And stared some more. “Please tell me you’re not _The Vow_ -ing me right now. Okay, we never made a pact on that, but that is clearly in violation of _something_.”

She couldn’t remember anything past turning eighteen and leaving for college with a Metallica loving roommate and a secret pet fish.

They called it retrograde amnesia, said everything could come back or none of it, and Cisco hadn’t hated fifty-fifty odds so much since he flipped a coin in high school and decided landing on heads was a good enough reason to give himself a mohawk. He took a broom to the ass when he stepped out of his grandmother’s bathroom with his uncle’s electric clippers in his hand and a significant lack of hair left on his head. This felt like taking a hundred ass broomings all at once.

Caitlin was a lot more skittish with no memories in the bank. The first time Barry ran in front of her in hopes of jogging her memories about metas and her friends and her life, she flinched next to Cisco and decided that Barry wasn’t someone she wanted to be around for the rest of the afternoon.

It was too much at once for her to wake up in an upside-down world and realize she’d gone upside down too. He found her breathing heavily and staring down at her hands in the lab as cold steam rolled from her fingers. In all the panic about hoping she lived and realizing she was going to but was still lost in her own mind, he forgot to take proper precautions. That was on him.

He helped her put the cuffs back on and felt a stab of regret twist in his gut at the fear in her eyes. “I should have explained that to you first. I’m sorry.”

“I’m… one of them?” she asked, and it was his heart that felt the next stab at the frightened way she was asking.

“You’re one of us,” he corrected, squeezing her hands. After some preparation, he showed her what he could do as Vibe. Her eyes got huge, but she didn’t flinch like she had with Barry. Her fear softened to something more like skepticism.

“Us,” she corrected herself after a while.

He smiled. “Us.”

****

Caitlin had a hard time being alone during her first few weeks of being erased. She lingered in the lab and listened more than she talked. He often caught her trailing her fingers over their desk or the medical instruments, touching, reaching for the echoes of the past that were attached. She went out when invited but struggled; he could see it in the way she tried to smile but didn’t quite make it or pretended not to hurt every time someone brought something up that she knew she should know but didn’t.

A world without Prince or David Bowie confused her and current politics made her brain hurt. Her love life in the last few years shocked her, but it did so like it would an outsider. She asked questions and followed his answers like she might do with a daytime soap. The lack of connection spared her a second round of pain, but still. He kept hoping something would trigger a memory, open the floodgates. Ronnie didn’t do it. Jay didn’t. Metas, developing powers, being taken hostage, saving people, _Grodd_ : nothing flipped that switch and brought Caitlin back.

She went to see her mother.

And came back the next day.

“Anything?” he asked when she met him for coffee for the gruesome details of that little family reunion.

She shook her head. “I think, maybe, I’m gone. Whoever I used to be.”

Cisco did his best to act like that wasn’t a punch to the gut, but it was a sledgehammer. She had to come back. No matter what, they always came back.

****

Meghan Trainor changed the world. Or, theirs. They were cooking dinner in Caitlin’s apartment, and Meghan wafted from the radio wanting to know what that icy thang hangin’ ‘round her neck was when Caitlin spun around at the counter, vegetable chopping knife pointed upward as she exclaimed rapidly over the music,

“That’s gold, show me some respect!”

Cisco froze at the sink and raised his hands, palms out. “I respect you.”

Caitlin remembered when the song just came out and Cisco sang it on repeat until she threatened to lock him up in the meta prison behind blissfully soundproof walls. Caitlin _remembered_. That, at least.

“You remember that?”

She nodded, and her smile wasn’t half-assed. It was huge and some blend of _thank God_ and hope. It was something. It was a lot compared to the nothing they just had when Maroon 5 was singing. Those losers hadn't helped, except to ensure that he would spend the evening singing way too high-pitched while he waited for that song to leave his head, which – now that he thought about it – could have triggered that same memory too eventually.

“You remember that!”

He rushed her, running water forgotten, chopped carrots abandoned, and only came up short with a glance at the knife.

“Oh.” Caitlin dropped it beside the vegetables, and Cisco engulfed her in a hug that she returned just as tightly.

He jolted as he accidentally vibed from a brush of her cheek against his. He was pulled from the room and into the future. It ran at him fast and bled into a dozen other images: Caitlin looking at him with a blinding smile, Caitlin beside him in bed - sheet only half covering the leg draped over his, Caitlin holding his hand as they strolled down the sidewalk with ice cream cones, Caitlin, Caitlin, Caitlin—with him, always, and happy.

He pulled back with a gasp, and she blinked at the shock on his face.

“Are you okay?”

That was a loaded question for a guy who just saw his closest friend laughing through the shower spray with him in a reality waiting for him down the road.

“Yeah,” he lied, because that was what you did when your brain damaged friend just had a breakthrough, his personal heart attack aside. “Of course. You remembered. That’s awesome.”

Caitlin was getting her past back, and he was getting a future he hadn’t seen coming.

****

His gaze started to linger longer when she wasn't looking, and sometimes when she was since she called him on it a few times.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing."

It was a 'nothing' the size of the Dominator spaceship, but he was a big believer in taking denial medicinally.

****

It took a week for her next memory to come knocking, but it was a good one.

“Why was I in a poodle skirt, and was that a Thunderbirds jacket?” she asked in the toy store aisle where they were shopping for birthday presents for John Jr.

“It was Halloween. You really wanted to dress up in a 50’s outfit, so we built our costumes from scratch and took second place at the costume party we went to.”

“Second?”

“Yeah,” he said, still bitter. “Some dude came as Chewie. He threaded each strand of fur individually. Like. Calm down. That should have been our trophy. That guy needs to go into professional costume design or leave the amateurs out of his overachieving.”

“There were trophies?”

“Well, there were Jason Voorhees masks made out of candy corn.”

“So way better than a trophy.”

“Exactly.”

Their shoulders bumped as they leaned in to debate whose birthday gift was better (his), and her smile made him remember the future, the way her fingers felt in his hair and how his hand moved to her waist without thought when she slid onto his lap, like she’d done it a thousand times. Or would do it.

****

“Oh God.” She groaned beside him at their desk and turned to Barry as she complained, “I’m pretty sure drunken karaoke night is something I could have lived without remembering.”

“Summer lovin'!” Barry sing-songed at her and spent the rest of the hour recalling everything about the night they hung out and sang together, badly.

Caitlin was animated despite her embarrassment, because every memory resurfacing was a good memory as far as she was concerned.

“Where were you?” she asked Cisco. “You wouldn’t have let me humiliate myself like that. You’re a bad friend, Barry.”

“Yeah, you’re a bad friend, Barry,” Cisco joined in just to watch Barry’s face go innocent and scandalized at once. Caitlin pat Cisco's hand but didn’t really let go until everyone stopped laughing. She smiled and looked away. He did the same.

****

"Remember that time you went streaking through Lakewood Park?" Cisco asked when they got to his place after a long day that ended with kicked off shoes at the door and takeout in front of the news where The Flash's latest rescue was being hailed across the city.

"I did not."

"How do you know? Your brain went through a blender. You have to believe me."

"I don't. No version of myself would run naked through a park. I feel confident about that."

"Fine," he acquiesced, "but you did moon a motorcycle gang during our road trip to Yosemite."

"No."

"Okay, we didn't go to Yosemite, but you did moon a bunch of bikers."

"No."

"Okay, that was me, but I don't like to get locked down with facts. They stifle a good story."

Caitlin's warm laughter did funny things to his heart as she settled lower on the couch and leaned her head against his shoulder.

"I wish I remembered..."

"What?" he prompted, and she peered up at him in a way that made him especially aware of their proximity, the peach smell of her shampoo, and how he never paid enough attention to the way her lips pulled to the side when she skirted too close to opening a door that exposed her.

"Everything?" she answered but hesitated, unsure. "You," she tried again. "I wish I remembered..." She shrugged, but when their eyes met, Cisco instantly felt like a coward in the face of her honesty. "All of you."

He turned back to the TV and pretended not to notice the jump in his heartbeat at the intensity of her gaze.

"I'm not that special," he assured her. "You're not missing much."

After a moment of determinedly not looking back at her - afraid of what he would see (afraid of what she would see reflected back at her) - Caitlin dropped her head back to his shoulder and weaved her arm through his.

"Do you ever tell the truth?" she asked.

"Not really."

Not even to himself.

****

“What is fudge-pocalypse, and should I be afraid?” Caitlin asked him from the doorway of the storage room in the lab where he was getting something to start a new project.

Mischief shot through him, and he ditched the project to make a grocery store run instead. Now that was a memory worth another bellyache.

They spent the evening baking and recreated chocolate mountain, eating the avalanche that followed. The sugar left him wired, and they killed an hour going through songs on his iPod to try to trigger another memory, before they both had simultaneous sugar crashes and laid down beside each other on the carpet beside the coffee table where the crumbling remains of the fudge disaster zone towered over them, devoured and victorious in their defeat.

Caitlin’s hand rested loosely over his wrist, and they fell asleep with their foreheads together. Cisco could see it without vibing, what a future with Caitlin would look like.

****

“Hey,” Caitlin said as she came into the lab at the end of July while he was busy and everyone else was out.

She stopped walking in there like she just stepped out of her bedroom and wandered into the jungle by mistake a while back. Familiarity was starting to creep back into her posture with the places she had keys to and the people who cared about her, even if it was based on a foundation of weeks and not the years of friendship and history that she deserved. It made him feel easier knowing she felt easier.

He didn’t look up from where he was standing over his computer. “Hey.”

“I know you,” she said.

“That’s good,” he replied, distracted as he input new data into the system. “It would be pretty weird to be best friends with a stranger.”

He paused as he realized that was exactly how it was for her right now. She woke up with an old BFF that shined like he was new. He wondered how this first impression and his _first_ first impression matched up.

“You’re the guy that brought me soup when I got the flu so bad I couldn’t get out of bed for a week. Not canned soup either. You made it from scratch.”

That was a good memory to come back. It painted him in a nice heroic, charitable light; way better than her remembering the time he accidentally ran over her purse with his car: crushed her compact, phone, and splattered lipstick all over her notecards. Amnesia cast a clean slate in some areas.

He grinned as his fingers flew over the keyboard. “My abuelita’s recipe. I used to pretend to be sick when I wasn’t just to get her to make it. That’s a family secret, though, so no blabbing the ingredients to anyone else.”

She ignored him. “You’re the guy that ate the popcorn I strung on my Christmas tree two years in a row, bought me a Wonder Woman costume when I told you I felt like I didn’t have it in me to keep going after Ronnie died, and slept over at my place after Jay made me afraid to be by myself. Without ever mentioning why you showed up with an overnight bag and a quart of my favorite ice cream. The one who is always there for me. No matter what.”

He turned to her slowly.

She wasn't just listing random memories that ticked back in. There was context to those moments and warmth in her voice that didn't just sound like Caitlin but was her, wholly. A piano could have dropped from the sky, and it wouldn't have hit him as hard.

“You remember.”

After months of puzzle pieces and dead ends, seeing her eyes sparkle in confirmation made the room feel like it was tilting. Caitlin was back. His Caitlin. With some modifications.

The tether that ran between them went taut.

He met her halfway, and they reached for each other. They clung together like they hadn't seen each other in months, and he supposed they hadn't—not really. As grateful as he was that she survived, fear had built at the back of his mind all these weeks, like static, wondering if every phone call, every squeezed hand or bad joke belonged only to him now, huge and minuscule moments that lost half their worth if he couldn't share them anymore.

Caitlin hesitated as she drew back, and his heart threatened to pound out of his chest as, uncertain eyes flicking down, she leaned in. Her lips came to his slowly, seeking permission or proof that what she was feeling wasn't just another symptom of banging her head too hard, that he was there too and felt it with her. It wasn't even a question, and if he was being honest with himself, it was something that had been growing in size, as hard as he tried to deny it, long before the visions confirmed it. Cisco pressed his lips to hers, and it was the first sensory memory to add to everything else they already had, a full history and an open road going forward.

“Welcome back,” he whispered, chest aching as it took the space reserved for her and expanded it twenty times over. His head went light in surprise and relief—and happiness. “Don’t go away again, deal? New pact.”

Her second kiss sealed it.


End file.
